Former Democrat picked for director of national intelligence
Tulsi Gabbard – a former Democratic congresswoman who joined the Republican Party to back Donald Trump – is the president-elect’s pick for director of national intelligence.
The wide-ranging role would mean she oversees US intelligence agencies like the CIA, FBI and the National Security Agency (NSA), which focuses on intelligence gathering.
The nomination has raised questions over Gabbard’s lack of experience in intelligence as well as accusations that she has in the past amplified Russia propaganda.
She will require Senate confirmation to take up the role.
But the nomination has sparked criticism in some quarters.
Reacting to the appointment on X, Democratic Virginia congresswoman member of the House Intelligence Committee Abigail Spanberger said she was “appalled at the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard”.
“Not only is she ill-prepared and unqualified, but she traffics in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar-al Assad and Vladimir Putin,” she said.
Who is Tulsi Gabbard?
Reuters
A military veteran who served with a medical unit in Iraq, Gabbard has set a number of political precedents in her career.
She was first elected to the Hawaii State Legislature aged 21 in 2002, the youngest person ever elected in the state. She left after one term when her National Guard unit was deployed to Iraq.
Gabbard went on to represent Hawaii in Congress from 2013 until 2021 – becoming the first Hindu to serve in the House.
She previously championed liberal causes like government-run healthcare, free college tuition and gun control. These issues were part of her 2020 run for the Democratic presidential nomination – which she eventually dropped out of, endorsing Joe Biden.
In 2022 she left the Democratic Party and initially registered as an independent – accusing her former party of being an “elitist cabal of warmongers” driven by “cowardly wokeness”.
Becoming a contributor to Fox News, she was vocal on topics such as gender and freedom of speech and became an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump before joining the Republican Party less than a month ago.
Controversial remarks on Syria and Ukraine
In 2019, during Gabbard’s bid to secure the Democratic presidential nomination she was criticised by rivals after receiving apparently favourable coverage on Russian state media.
In the same year, she also faced criticism for her perceived support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, seen as a key Russian ally.
She said Assad “is not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States” – and defended meeting him in 2017, during Trump’s first term.
In that same year, she said in an interview with CNN that she was “sceptical” that the Syrian regime was behind a chemical weapons attack which killed dozens of people.
Trump said there could be “no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons”, speaking after the United States launched a missile strike on Syrian air base in response.
In 2019, Gabbard did also describe Assad as a “brutal dictator”.
Gabbard has also made a string of controversial statements relating to Russia and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Writing on social media on the day Russia invaded, she said the war could have been prevented if the US and its Western allies had recognised Russia’s “legitimate security concerns” about Ukraine’s bid to join Nato.
The following month, she said it was an “undeniable fact” that there were US-funded biolabs in Ukraine that could “release and spread deadly pathogens” as she called for a ceasefire.
In response, Republican senator Mitt Romney said Gabbard had embraced “actual Russian propaganda”.
On Russian TV her nomination as intelligence director is being framed as likely to complicate Washington’s relations with Ukraine.
Rossiya 1 correspondent Dmitry Melnikov said that her nomination “does not bode well for Kyiv”, noting that in the past she “openly accused the Biden administration of provoking Russia”.
The channel’s presenter also pointed out that Gabbard had “strongly criticised Zelensky and called for dialogue with Russia”.
Additional reporting BBC Monitoring’s Karine Mirumyan
InfoWars, the website of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, has been purchased by The Onion – a parody outlet – putting an end to the controversial platform that drummed up anti-government paranoia in the United States for a quarter of a century.
The auction sale on Thursday came as the result of a 2022 ruling that found Jones liable for nearly $1.5bn in damages for defaming the families of the victims of a mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, by calling the attack a hoax.
The 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook claimed the lives of 20 children and six educators, but Jones falsely claimed that the incident did not happen, arguing that the victims and survivors were crisis actors.
The Onion CEO Ben Collins confirmed the sale on Thursday, saying that it took place with the backing of Sandy Hook families.
“The Onion is proud to acquire InfoWars, and we look forward to continuing its storied tradition of scaring the site’s users with lies until they fork over their cold, hard cash,” Collins said in a statement.
He added that he hopes that the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims will find joy in the “cosmic joke” that The Onion now owns InfoWars.
The Onion
The Onion is a parody website that publishes satirical news stories that often present a caricature of politicians and current events.
But with US and international politics taking strange turns in recent years, some Onion headlines have come close to describing actual news.
The fictitious CEO of Global Tetrahedron LLC, The Onion’s parent company, called InfoWars an “invaluable tool for brainwashing and controlling the masses”.
“Through it all, InfoWars has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society – values that resonate deeply with all of us at Global Tetrahedron,” a satirical statement, attributed to Bryce P Tetraeder, said.
“No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds.”
On a more serious note, the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety announced that it will be an exclusive advertiser on InfoWars when it relaunches in its new format.
“It’s fitting that a platform once used to profit off of tragedy will be a tool of education, hence our multi-year advertising commitment to this new venture,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement.
“We’re proud to be a part of what comes next, not only in terms of staunching the flow of hurtful misinformation, but also for the potential this new venture has to help Everytown reach new audiences.”
The home page of InfoWars currently features a short statement that reads: “Site unavailable till further notice.”
The US has been suffering from rampant gun violence amid lax regulations on the purchase and carrying of firearms.
According to the tracker Gun Violence Archive, 18,854 people were killed in US shootings last year.
The Second Amendment of the US Constitution grants the right to bear arms. Democrats usually advocate tighter control of weapons, but Republicans largely view gun ownership as a fundamental right.
That’s why Jones and other right-wing conspiracy theorists have questioned mass shootings in the country.
The Sandy Hook families have been pushing to hold Jones accountable for the falsehoods he has spread about them.
Since the 2022 ruling in their favour, the families have been engaged in an ongoing legal fight over the collection of the damages and the fate of Jones’s assets, including InfoWars.
Chris Mattei, a lawyer for the Connecticut plaintiffs, welcomed the purchase of InfoWars by The Onion, calling it a “public service” that will diminish Jones’s reach.
“From day one, these families have fought against all odds to bring true accountability to Alex Jones and his corrupt business,” Mattei said in a statement.
“Our clients knew that true accountability meant an end to Infowars and an end to Jones’s ability to spread lies, pain and fear at scale.”
Jones defiant
For his part, Jones – defiant as ever – pledged to continue broadcasting and fighting to keep the website, saying that he would seek a court injunction to block the sale.
It is unclear how much The Onion paid for InfoWars and whether the families will receive the funds and how.
“This is the tyranny of the new world order – desperate to silence the American people,” Jones said in a video posted on X, decrying the sale of his website as an attack on free speech.
While the First Amendment of the US Constitution protects free speech, there are state and federal US laws that prohibit defamation based on falsehoods.
Jones had amassed millions of viewers with his bombastic style and alarmist warnings about plots by “the globalists” to destroy America.
He moved from the fringes of the media landscape as he grew his audience and he has conducted interviews with mainstream right-wing politicians, including then-candidate Donald Trump in 2015.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, describes Jones as “one of the most prolific and influential conspiracy theorists in contemporary America”.
“With millions of regular viewers and over two decades on the air, Jones has created a financial and brand empire out of selling misinformation and disinformation, as well as self-help dietary products,” the group says in a report on Jones.
“His uncorroborated reporting has led to many innocent people being harassed by internet trolls both online and in person.”
Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by deliberately causing the mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) says.
About 1.9 million people – 90% of Gaza’s population – have fled their homes over the past year, and 79% of the territory is under Israeli-issued evacuation orders, according to the UN.
HRW’s report says this amounts to “forcible transfer” and that “evidence shows it has been systematic and part of a state policy”. It also says Israeli actions appear to “meet the definition of ethnic cleansing”.
Israel has said the report is “completely false and detached from reality”.
“Contrary to claims in HRW’s report, Israel’s efforts are directed solely at dismantling Hamas’s terror capabilities and not at the people of Gaza,” Oren Marmorstein, a spokesperson of Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs posted on X.
He added Israel will “continue to operate in accordance with the law of armed conflict”.
HRW has also accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields by operating inside homes and civilian infrastructure.
The report was published as Israeli forces continued a ground offensive in northern Gaza that has displaced up to 130,000 people over the past five weeks.
The UN has said 75,000 people remain under siege with dwindling supplies of water and food in the towns of Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, where the Israeli military says it is preventing a Hamas resurgence.
Under the laws of war, the forced displacement of any civilians inside an occupied territory is prohibited, unless it is necessary for their security or for an imperative military reason.
For displacement to be lawful, civilians must be moved safely and provided with accommodation and essential supplies. They must also be able to return to their homes after the end of hostilities in the area.
HRW’s report – based on interviews with displaced Palestinians, analysis of Israeli evacuation orders, satellite imagery showing destruction of buildings, and videos and photos of strikes – concludes that there is no plausible imperative military reason to justify the displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s population and that the other conditions for it be lawful have also not been met.
The US-based group says the Israeli evacuation orders have been “inconsistent, inaccurate, and frequently not communicated to civilians with enough time”, and that they “did not consider the needs of people with disabilities and others who are unable to leave”. Israeli forces have also “repeatedly struck designated evacuation routes and safe zones”, it adds.
It accuses Israeli authorities of blocking “all but a small fraction of the necessary humanitarian aid, water, electricity, and fuel from reaching civilians in need”, as well as carrying out attacks that have damaged and destroyed vital resources like hospitals and bakeries.
HRW also alleges that Israel’s military has “intentionally demolished or severely damaged civilian infrastructure, including controlled demolitions of homes, with the apparent aim of creating an extended ‘buffer zone’ along Gaza’s perimeter with Israel and a corridor which will bifurcate Gaza”. “The destruction is so substantial that it indicates the intention to permanently displace many people,” it warns.
Israeli government ministers are also cited as saying that Gaza’s territory would decrease and that land would be handed to Israeli settlers.
“Forced displacement has been widespread, and the evidence shows it has been systematic and part of a state policy. Such acts also constitute crimes against humanity,” HRW says.
It also says that the “organised, violent displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, who are members of another ethnic group, is likely planned to be permanent in the buffer zones and security corridors”, and that such actions “amount to ethnic cleansing”.
The Israeli military has denied that it is seeking to create permanent buffer zones and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar recently said that displaced people from northern Gaza would be allowed to return home at the end of the war.
Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
More than 43,700 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Donald Trump’s US presidential election victory on November 5 has cast a sharp spotlight on what military and financial assistance Ukraine could expect from the European Union.
Trump last year pressed United States lawmakers to delay a $61.4bn military aid package to Ukraine, and claimed he would end the Ukraine war “in a day” if he won.
Ukraine was also concerned that the delivery of weapons promised under the administration of President Joe Biden be fulfilled before the handover of power on January 20.
Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder said the US had delivered 83 percent of munitions, 67 percent of critical air defences, and 60 percent of firepower capabilities committed to Ukraine under defence packages between April and mid-October.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday that he did not expect the start of Trump’s presidency to change the US position on Ukraine.
(Al Jazeera)
But Trump has demanded that EU member states which are also NATO members raise defence spending to three percent of gross domestic product (GDP), and threatened to let Russia do “whatever the hell it wants” with them if they refuse, suggesting US backing for NATO, and potentially Ukraine, would be conditional under his presidency.
That has raised questions about the extent of European military autonomy and political will to continue supporting Ukraine with or without a supportive administration in Washington.
EU external affairs chief Josep Borrell told European Pravda that the bloc would deliver a million artillery shells by the end of the year. Those shells were promised in spring 2023 for delivery last spring.
“We almost did it. We have already delivered more than 980 thousand shells, and very soon we will deliver one million shells,” Borrell said.
Shells purchased from around the world under a Czech initiative will have provided another half million artillery rounds by year’s end, he said.
In addition, Borrell said, EU production capacity had now ramped up to a million shells a year.
Rescuers work at the site of an apartment building hit by a Russian missile attack in Kryvyi Rih, in the Dnipropetrovsk region [Danylo Antoniuk/Reuters]
The EU has spent 122 billion euros ($129bn) supporting Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Should US aid come to a halt, the EU could hand over to Ukraine $300bn in Russian assets under management in the EU, and calls increased in the past week to do so.
The EU has so far agreed to give Ukraine only the profits from those assets, fearing retaliatory effects on the bloc’s currency.
Ukraine has received a first instalment of 400 million euros ($425m). At a meeting of EU directors of defence policy in Brussels on Tuesday, Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Serhiy Boyev asked the EU to rush a 1.5 billion-euro ($1.6bn) tranche of profits from frozen Russian assets promised this year, for investment in Ukraine’s defence industrial base.
(Al Jazeera)
There was also renewed pressure on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to break ranks with the cautious US policy not to use Western weapons to strike deep inside Russia, and supply Ukraine with 500km-range (310-mile) Taurus missiles, which could strike Russian airfields.
“I think it is right, unchanged, that I have made my contribution to ensuring that there has been no escalation. And I would like to make it clear, that the country that is doing the most in Europe to ensure that Ukraine is not left alone and is supported is also a country that must ensure that an escalation does not occur,” Scholz told the Bundestag or lower house of the German parliament on Wednesday.
Striking airfields would deprive Russia of its ability to launch heavy glide bombs, one of its most effective weapons against Ukrainian front lines.
A grim situation on the front lines
Vladyslav Voloshyn, a spokesman for Ukraine’s southern defences, on Saturday said Russia was intensifying the use of glide bombs in the south.
“In October, the Russians used about 500 guided aerial bombs in the southern direction, specifically on Ukrainian positions and on populated areas near the line of combat,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on Sunday morning that Russia dropped 800 glide bombs across the entire front in the previous week – a rate he first reported in the first week of October – which computes to more than 3,000 glide bombs a month.
In addition, Russia typically launches some 1,600 kamikaze drones and 80 missiles into Ukraine each week, Zelenskyy has said.
Ukraine’s armed forces said the Russian strategy was also continuing to bomb civilian areas in Kharkiv with glide bombs to demoralise the population. A Ukrainian counter-invasion in the Russian region of Kursk last August had produced a lull in bombardment.
“In the last few weeks, the enemy has started using guided aerial bombs again, said Volodymyr Degtyarev, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Guard. “Mostly in the city, on civilian infrastructure, mainly in the evening or at night, although there are also daytime shellings.”
(Al Jazeera)
Ukraine’s defenders continued to be under intense pressure throughout the front in the past week, with the Russian hammer falling hardest on Kurakhove and Pokrovsk, front-line towns west of Donetsk city.
Ukraine’s General Staff reported 125 combat clashes on Monday, most in the direction of Pokrovsk, with Kurakhove remaining a “difficult situation”.
Zelenskyy sent reinforcements to those two directions, but it appeared that by Tuesday Russian troops were advancing along Zaporizkyi Street in northeast Kurakhove.
One of Ukraine’s greatest concerns has been Russia’s ability to absorb losses of men and armour in this war.
Colonel Vadym Mysnyk, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Siversk group of forces, told a telethon that Russian assaults typically started with armour, followed by waves of infantry at 10-15 minute intervals, a tactic which led to high attrition rates for the Russians.
Russian assaults have clearly been bloody, with Russian casualties last week at 9,800, according to Ukraine’s Ground Forces Commander Oleksandr Pavlyuk – confirming the daily rate of about 1,400 casualties observed since June.
Yet reinforcements have kept coming, leading Ukraine to counter-invade Kursk in order to pin down Russian troops there, preventing them from joining the front against beleaguered defenders.
Zelenskyy said in his evening address that 50,000 Russian troops were being held at bay in Kursk, noting “Our men are holding back a fairly large grouping of Russian troops – 50,000 of the occupier’s army personnel, who, due to the Kursk operation, cannot be deployed to other Russian offensive directions on our territory.”
The propaganda war
Donald Trump’s first US cabinet picks were unlikely to have inspired Ukrainian confidence in the continuity of US support.
On Wednesday, Trump nominated former US House Representative Tulsi Gabbard for the position of director of National Intelligence.
“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO, which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border,” Gabbard posted on X when the war began.
That echoed the argument made by Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova on Wednesday – that the war could end the moment Western support for Ukraine stopped.
(Al Jazeera)
Russian President Vladimir Putin last week repeated the Russian position, portraying a war Russia started as a Western initiative to crush Russia.
“The West’s calls to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, a country with the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, demonstrate the extreme adventurism of Western politicians,” he told the Valdai Discussion Club on November 7.
“The volume of sanctions, punitive measures applied to our country, has no equivalent in history. Our opponents assumed that they would deal Russia a crushing, knockout blow, from which it would simply not recover, and would cease to be one of the key elements of international life.”
“Here comes Russian propaganda, which falsely claims that ‘by supporting Ukraine, you are continuing the war’,” said Borrell in his interview. “’If you love peace, you should stop supporting Ukraine’.
“To counter this propaganda, we must explain to people that peace is not just the end of war. Peace through the surrender of Ukraine, or a story that will lead to the establishment of a puppet government in Kyiv, as in Belarus – then we will get the disintegration of Ukrainian society and see the Russian army on the Polish border. This is against not only our values, but also our interests.”
Satirical news publication The Onion has purchased Infowars, the media organisation headed by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, which spread false rumours about the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
The sale price was not immediately disclosed.
Infowars and its assets were auctioned off to pay Jones’s debts. He declared bankruptcy after the Sandy Hook families won $1.5b (£1.18b) in defamation damages against him.
Jones founded Infowars in 1999. He has vowed to continue broadcasting using a different platform.
Polling follows a largely peaceful and low-key campaign
Votes are being counted in Sri Lanka after snap parliamentary elections, barely seven weeks after a new president was sworn in.
More than 8,800 candidates are in the fray in an election marked by a low-key campaign.
Voting began at 07:00 local time (01:30 GMT) and ran until 16:00 (10.30 GMT). Results are expected on Friday.
Out of 225 seats in the parliament, 196 MPs will be directly elected. The rest will be nominated by political parties based on the percentage of votes they get in what is known as proportional representation.
Getty Images
Sri Lankans returned to the polls barely seven weeks after choosing a new president
“Over 8,800 candidates belonging to 49 political parties and 284 independent groups are contesting the elections but only around 1,000 candidates have actively campaigned,” Rohana Hettiarachchi, executive director of poll monitoring group People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections, told the BBC.
High inflation, food and fuel shortages precipitated a political crisis in 2022 which led to the ousting of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. His successor Ranil Wickremesinghe managed to negotiate a bailout package worth $3bn with the International Monetary Fund – but many Sri Lankans continue to feel economic hardship.
“We are still stuck with the problems we faced before. We still don’t have financial help even to fulfil our daily needs,” 26-year-old garment factory worker Manjula Devi, who works in the Katunayake Free Trade Zone near Colombo, told the BBC.
The number of people living below the poverty line in Sri Lanka has risen to 25.9% in the past four years. The World Bank expects the economy to grow by only 2.2% in 2024.
“Sri Lanka has still not recovered from the 2022 economic crisis, even with the IMF bailout,” Raisa Wickrematunge, deputy editor of Himal Southasian magazine, told the BBC.
“I am typing this from the Sri Jayawardenapura general hospital, a public hospital which is switching off its lights and fans to try to bring down skyrocketing electricity costs.”
In 2022, the country defaulted on its foreign debt for the first time, forcing it to seek debt restructuring deals.
Observers expect a multi-cornered contest in the general election, in which 17.1 million voters are registered to take part. A split vote may ultimately dent the chances of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s party, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), enacting ambitious reforms.
“Analysts predict he may struggle to get two-thirds and may have to rely on coalitions. This would make his task much more difficult,” says Raisa Wickrematunge.
The election campaign has been largely peaceful with no reports of poll-related deaths or large scale misuse of government resources.
“Violence is negligible compared to previous elections. It will be peaceful elections,” hopes Rohana Hettiarachchie.
Scientists have found the largest coral in the world near the remote Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean, a gigantic organism that can be seen from space.
The “mega coral” is 32 metres (105 feet) long and 34 metres (111 feet) wide and is believed to be about 300 years old, the National Geographic Society said on Thursday. It is mainly brown but features splashes of bright yellows, blues and reds, and is covered with ripples of waves, mirroring the ocean’s surface.
The organism, which has a circumference of 183 metres (600 feet), is made up of a network of coral polyps, tiny individual creatures. It was discovered by members of National Geographic’s Pristine Seas team – a group of scientists working on board a research vessel in the southwest Pacific Ocean in October.
Unlike a reef, which is a network of many coral colonies, the newly discovered structure is a standalone coral that has grown uninterrupted for hundreds of years.
Warming oceans caused by climate change have drained the life from corals, including in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The researchers said, “Witnessing this large healthy coral oasis in slightly deeper waters is a beacon of hope.”
The coral species, Pavona clavus, provides habitat, shelter and breeding grounds for an array of species from shrimp and crabs to fish.
Despite its colours and size, to the naked eye, the coral looks like a giant rock beneath the ocean surface. When the researchers initially spotted it, they thought it might be remnants of a shipwreck due to its size until one of the team dove for a closer look.
The coral is longer than the planet’s biggest animal, the blue whale. It provides essential habitat, shelter and breeding grounds for an array of species from shrimp and crabs to fish [Handout/Inigo San Felix/National Geographic Society via AFP]
“Just when we think there is nothing left to discover on planet earth, we find a massive coral made of nearly one billion little polyps, pulsing with life and colour,” said Enric Sala, National Geographic explorer in residence and founder of Pristine Seas.
“This is a significant scientific discovery, like finding the world’s tallest tree,” Sala said.
It is three times bigger than the previous record-breaker, known as Big Momma, in American Samoa, and is about the size of two basketball courts or five tennis courts.
But there is cause for alarm, Sala said, noting that the coral is not safe from global warming despite its remote location.
“The genetic code of these simple polyps is an enormous encyclopaedia that has written how to survive multiple climatic conditions, and until now it does so in the face of ocean warming,” said Manu San Felix, underwater cinematographer of Pristine Seas – the first to spot the coral.
The discovery comes as delegations from 200 countries are meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the United Nations climate summit (COP29). The event is being held during another year of record-breaking temperatures, adding pressure to the negotiations aimed at curbing climate change.
The last global scientific consensus on climate change was released in 2021 through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, however, scientists say evidence shows global warming and its effects are unfolding faster than expected.
The coral is so big that it can be seen from space [Handout/Inigo San Felix/National Geographic Society via AFP]
The world may already have hit the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7F) of warming above the average pre-industrial temperature, beyond which it is at risk of irreversible and extreme climate change, scientists say.
Concerning life underwater, scientists fear the world’s reefs have passed a point of no return, with the world in the throes of a fourth mass coral bleaching event – the largest on record. On Wednesday, the International Union for Conservation of Nature said 44 percent of reef-building coral species globally are at risk of extinction.
The Solomon Islands, where the coral was discovered, are on the front line of risks posed by global warming and ranked as the second-most at-risk nation for natural disasters.
“The ocean provides for our livelihoods and has contributed so much to our national economy and communities,” said Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele. “Our survival depends on healthy coral reefs, so this exciting discovery underlines the importance of protecting and sustaining them for future generations.”
French military technology is being used in Sudan’s brutal civil war in violation of a UN arms embargo, rights organisation Amnesty International has said.
It says the Rapid Support Forces militia is using vehicles in the Darfur region supplied by the United Arab Emirates that are fitted with French hardware as it battles the army.
“Our research shows that weaponry designed and manufactured in France is in active use on the battlefield in Sudan,” said Amnesty’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard.
French authorities have not responded to the accusations while the UAE has previously denied arming the RSF.
The Galix defence system – made in France by companies KNDS and Lacroix – is used for land forces to help counter close-range attacks.
Amnesty said the weapons could be used to commit or facilitate serious rights violations, adding that the French government must ensure the companies “immediately stop the supply of this system to the UAE”.
The rights group shared images, which it said it had verified, of destroyed vehicles on the ground that had the Galix system visible on them.
“If France cannot guarantee through export controls, including end user certification, that arms will not be re-exported to Sudan, it should not authorise those transfers,” it said.
The UN first imposed an arms embargo in Darfur in 2004, following allegations of ethnic cleansing against the region’s non-Arabic population.
Amnesty has called for the embargo to be expanded to the rest of Sudan, and to strengthen its monitoring mechanism following the outbreak of a civil war last year.
Amnesty has urged all countries to stop directly and indirectly supplying arms to Sudan’s fighting factions.
The paramilitary RSF, led by general Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, has been at war with Sudan’s regular army under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan since April 2023 when the two former allies took up arms against each other in a ferocious power struggle.
The RSF has been accused of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, which it has denied, blaming local militias.
Both parties have been accused of committing war crimes, with the ongoing fighting leaving thousands dead and millions displaced.
65-year-old man allegedly told police he defaced Shinto shrine as a ‘prank’.
Japanese police have arrested a 65-year-old American tourist for allegedly defacing a Tokyo shrine.
The man, identified as Steve Hayes, is accused of using his fingernails to scratch five letters into a torii gate at the Meiji Jingu shrine on Tuesday morning.
Hayes said he was writing the name of a family member into the gate – which represents the border between the living and sacred worlds in the Shinto religion – as a prank, according to the police.
Staff at the Meiji Jingu shrine, constructed in 1920 to honour the spirits of Emperor Meiji and his wife Empress Shoken, discovered the damage the same day and alerted police, who arrested Hayes on Wednesday.
It was not immediately clear how they identified Hayes, who authorities say arrived in Japan with his family on Monday, nor what charges he could face.
The Meiji Jingu shrine was constructed in 1920 to honour the spirits of Emperor Meiji and his wife Empress Shoken [Sebastian Kahnert/picture alliance via Getty Images]
It is the second such incident at a shrine in the Japanese capital this week.
On Monday, police said they were investigating after the kanji character for “death” was graffitied on two spots of a stone wall at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine honouring Japan’s war dead.
The announcement followed two other defacement incidents at the same shrine – which has been a source of diplomatic friction with China and other Asian countries due to its commemoration of Japan’s World War II leaders – in recent months.
In June, the word “toilet” was found spray-painted in red on a stone pillar at the shrine, while footage circulated on social media of a man urinating on the monument.
A Chinese man living in Japan was charged with property damage and desecration of a place of worship in July, while two other Chinese men have been put on wanted lists.
In August, Chinese characters and some letters from the Latin alphabet were also written on the shrine with a black felt-tip pen, police said.
Japan welcomed a record 17.78 million foreign visitors in the first half of this year, with the weak yen helping to propel tourist numbers above pre-pandemic levels.
The influx of visitors has delivered a boost to Japan’s economy, but also prompted grumbles from some locals fed up with poor behaviour and breaches of cultural etiquette by visitors.
Reuters
